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Engaging audiences is widely regarded as essential for science communicators aiming to bridge the gap between the expert knowledge they convey and their target audience's presumed lack of expertise. Drawing on the concept of discursive interpersonality (Suau et al., 2021), this study explores a corpus of 30 digital feature articles from the SciDis Corpus (Pascual and Sancho-Ortiz, 2024) in order to identify and analyse pragmatic strategies and their associated (meta)discursive features used by science communicators to make expert knowledge accessible and engaging for lay audiences. Results show that writers deploy a range of strategies and resources, including not only interactional metadiscourse features, as expected, but also strategic resources adapted from journalistic and narrative discourses. In sum, the study shows that audience-oriented pragmatic strategies (Lorés, 2024b) extend beyond traditional metadiscourse (Hyland, 2005b). Further conclusions point to editorial and disciplinary differences in the use of pragmatic and (meta)discursive engaging strategies.

The main aim of the article is to look at the forms of protection and popularisation of traditional rural crafts, as well as to show phenomena that influence the processes of their decontextualisa­tion. Currently, there are 85 entries on the National List of Intangible Cultural Heritage, of which 35 accepted applications concern knowledge about traditional crafts and forms of transmitting skills in producing particular artefacts. In addition to the increased demand for their products, creators often have to face many problems, the most important of which is the lack of successors to the tradition. The study shows how modern forms of protection of intangible cultural heritage phenomena affect its vitality and state of preservation.

Popularyzacja wiedzy w Gimnazjum/Liceum Wołyńskim w Krzemieńcu (1805–1832) była jedną z form działalności nauczycieli. Cieszyła się dużą popularnością wśród okolicznej ludności, nie tyle jednak ze względu na walor poznawczy, co na aspekt widowiskowy.  Prowadzona była w ciągu roku szkolnego oraz podczas egzaminów publicznych (popisów) na zakończenie nauki. Liczną publiczność gromadziły pokazy eksperymentów, prezentowane przez profesora fizyki Karola Jentza, a także nauka ogrodnictwa praktycznego prowadzona w ogrodzie botanicznym przez ogrodnika Karola Witzella. Jednak do tej działalności władze szkolne miały stosunek ambiwalentny. Z jednej strony  doceniano wysiłki nauczycieli, z drugiej widowiskowość pokazów budziła poważne zastrzeżenia czy wręcz niechęć zwierzchników.

William Robinson (1838‒1935) was one of the most influential gardeners of the Victorian period. His publishing empire in particular can be considered as one of the strongest impetuses that fostered the self-definition of the British people as a nation of gardeners. Robinson’s journalistic work and editorial enterprises, rather than his landscape creations, have indeed contributed to the recording and cataloguing of a national tradition in the late 19th century by giving written and visual space—a voice and views—to an imagined community of gardeners. This paper will read William Robinson’s garden periodicals as a fertile ground from which a number of gardening practices, aesthetic forms and representations developed into shared customs. As such, gardening, gardens and landscapes emerged as an invaluable heritage to be preserved. I will first explain how his magazines opened a new space to a broader readership, a more diverse set of contributors, and even to other editors. This was accompanied by new ways of sharing and disseminating knowledge via text and illustration, which was largely co-constructed in popular gardening newspapers and magazines, further contributing to the creation of a sense of community among readers, and to the constitution of a shared ‘garden lore’. I will then ponder over the notion of collective horticultural heritage, which I suggest materialised in his publications out of the amalgamation of the myriad personal accounts, experiments, and views, and I will explain the extent to which this was attuned with modernity.

The year 1918 found Polish national music in a state of extreme neglect, to which had “contributed” — as far as Warsaw was concerned — the period of partitions as well as the time of the Prussian occupation (1915–1918). Attempts to catch up in the field of production and popularisation of national music made from late 1918 by Warsaw activists associated with the a disruption in the existing structure of the public following the influx into ruling party (National Democracy) came up against obstacles caused by Warsaw of impoverished Poles from the provinces, including Russia, as well as an intensification of conflicts between the Polish and Jewish populations. Programmes for a revival of the national music tradition focused primarily on practical actions aimed at improving the lot of Polish musicians by providing them with support from the state and educating a new Polish audience. The third aspect of these programmes was the organisation of a government campaign promoting Polish music abroad. The paper presents unknown sources from the daily Warsaw press of the first half of the 1920s illustrating Warsaw’s everyday musical life in these aspects.

In the context of the space race, space science became an area of collaboration between the Spanish dictatorship and the United States of America during the 1960s. The Francoist regime leveraged its collaboration in the space race as an internal tool for political legitimization. This article examines the role of science popularization in this legitimization process by focusing on the TV show (“Friends of Outer Space”), broadcast between 1967 and 1969 and aimed at young audiences. Specifically, it analyses the available episodes of the show and the trajectory of its scriptwriter, science writer and PhD in Law Sebastià Estradé (1923-2016). The article examines three key dimensions of : the celebration of Spanish science and technology; the portrayal of the relationship between Spain and the United States; and the program’s integration of Catholic faith with the popularization of space science.

Through the case study of Manuel Vidal Españó (1905-1984), a Spanish engineer and science popularizer, this paper addresses some features of science popularization in Franco’s dictatorship (1939-1975), such as the apolitical and uncritical techno-optimism and the (dis)continuities with the previous political regime. Vidal Españó conducted science radio talks on Radio Barcelona from 1924 until the late 1960s, particularly in his show (the Scientific Advances), which broke the typical one-way radio communication, establishing a dynamic relationship with his audience. His techno-optimistic and uncritical stance toward science and technology was a strategic approach for navigating the Francoist regime, allowing him to express occasional dissent. In addition to analysing his adaptation to new political conditions, the article explores his connection with the public, illustrating how an effective exchange of knowledge emerged, revealing the working classes’ understanding of science and technology during Francoism.

Popularization of knowledge is of considerable importance and necessity, and traditional knowledge popularization activities suffer from high cost and low acceptance, which affect their effectiveness and coverage. Applying virtual avatars to educational videos may be an effective way to solve the problem. This study investigates the impact of applying virtual avatars to educational videos on user experience. Constructed a model of the impact of user experience on educational videos with virtual avatars, collected data from the target population, and analyzed it empirically. The video quality and virtual avatar expressiveness dimensions of the influencing factors have a significant positive effect on the learning effect, emotional experience and user engagement dimensions of user experience; the content quality dimension of the influencing factors has a significant negative effect on the three dimensions of user experience. The video quality and virtual avatar expressiveness dimensions of the influencing factors have a significant positive effect on the learning effect, emotional experience and user engagement dimensions of user experience; the content quality dimension of the influencing factors has a significant negative effect on the three dimensions of user experience.

The popularisation of legal knowledge is a critical issue for equal access to law and justice. Legal discourse has been justly criticised for its obscure terminology and convoluted phrasing, which notably led to the Plain Language Movement in English-speaking countries. In Canada, the concept of Plain Language has been applied to French since the 1980s due to the official policy of bilingualism, while the concept has only been recently discussed in France. In this paper, we examine the impact of Plain Language rewriting on legal phraseology in French popularisation contexts. The first aim of our study is to see if plain texts published in France contain more traces of legal phraseology than French Canadian texts. Our second objective is to determine if a ‘phraseology of plain language’ can be identified across genres and languages. To do this, we compare two corpora of expert-to-expert legal texts written in French—made up, respectively, of legislative texts published in France and judicial texts published by the Supreme Court of Canada—with two corpora of texts that are claimed to have been written in Plain French Language for a non-expert readership—texts that guide laypersons through legal and administrative processes in France and summaries of decisions by the Supreme Court of Canada. Using n-grams, we extract and discuss the patterns that emerge from the corpora. In particular, our analyses rely on the concept of ‘lexico–grammatical patterns’, defined as the minimal unit of meaningful text made up of recurrent sequences of lexical and grammatical items. We then identify a sample of recurring lexico–grammatical patterns and their discursive functions.

ABSTRACT Binomial nomenclature in Latin is used to name species, allowing communication between scientists but not with the general public. We compiled popular names in Portuguese, Spanish, and English for the rodent species that occur in Brazil, revealing a large gap in Portuguese, where 11.5% of the species do not have common names, or they share a same name, as 66 of the Echimyidae (“toró”), and 57 of the Cricetidae species (“rato-do-mato”). In contrast, almost all species have common names in English, which are generally unique. To highlight the importance of ecosystem services that rodents provide to society, it is essential to provide common names in the local language where the species was described.